In praise of poets

When a poet comes along whose words burn through my mind and ruptures my spirit, I cannot help but slip into an eclipse of silence. As far as I can remember, I’ve experienced these brilliant silences as something mysteriously powerful and creative. These moments are my passages into the heart of my forest – the space in which a greater soul whispers answers to the questions of my other inner somewhat smaller soul. Rilke, Rumi, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Cocteau, Anna Akhmatova, Dickinson, Frost, Gibran – and especially Antonin Artaud are some whose words have inspired and transformed me.

à cause d’Artaud

My hidden quiet love for these great poets is undying– their words have raised me out of my graves, lifted my spirit into symphonies of softness and beauty, and have served to comfort me in times of solitude and doubt. Their words have been the eyes of insight and wisdom into what I might not have been able to see or certainly the eyes of that which I could not have put into words myself. I really do not know what my soul-spirit or creative life would have looked like without their great thoughts, words, and masterpieces.

I give birth to visual poems because of my love for poetry. The great deep silent spaces within caused by the sound of a word – a sentence – a thought – spin, swirl, and splash into colours, shapes, visual sounds, movements, and image. Collaging my silences in silence is to me a journey – a dance – from one poem into the next.

Most recently, I have been inspired by several poets I have been fortunate to meet during my journey so far on twitter. I have finished works inspired by poets such as acclaimed Canadian poet and novelist David Weedmark, French Canadian poet Ulrich Else, and dear dark LadyDarkrage. Nonetheless, I praise you – all you poets of the earth – and thank you for being my brush, my colours, my sound, my silence, and my image. Without you my creative heart would be colorless, motionless, and would simply fail to create or do its work.

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“I’ve experienced these brilliant silences as something mysteriously powerful and creative. These moments are my passages into the heart of my forest – the space in which a greater soul whispers answers to the questions of my other inner somewhat smaller soul.”